TM

Q u a r t e r 3 - 2 015

S M A R T S O C I A L Q U A R T E R LY

These Tactics Use Facebook Custom Audiences To Combine CRM And Social To Increase Ad Efficiency

How Lexus’s Highly Personalized Approach To Facebook Video Gassed Up Engagement

The Undiscovered Truth About The Social Media Effect Of The Emmys

Unif ied del ivers technology and services to connect marketing data sets

and optimize investments across the customer journey. Unif ied’s software

empowers Fortune 500 companies and agencies to drive marketing success

in the context of their business goals. The Unif ied platform transforms

fragmented marketing data into act ionable intel l igence and real-t ime

activation. For more information, vis it www.Unif ied.com.

Q3 2015

S O C I A L I N D U S T R Y S U M M A R Y

Social marketing is big and getting bigger. With a 31% increase projected for 2016¹, social network ad revenue

continues to accelerate at an incredible pace, with no signs of slowing down. Marketers have no choice but to

become savvier in capitalizing on the unique strengths this channels provides.

Long gone are the days of media buyers simply mirroring their search or display strategies for social. We now see

brands and agencies expanding their tactics to take advantage of the unique strengths inherent to social marketing.

In this edition of the Smart Social Quarterly™, we highlight several brands that have leveraged these unique strengths

to drive performance and efficiencies.

The first strength we’ll cover is the ability to deploy personalized content at scale. This is no easy task in any medium.

Marketers must manage the mass production of creative assets and have the technology to automate the delivery and

optimization of potentially complex ad units.

A perfect example of this is illustrated in a recent Lexus campaign for the NX, a new crossover SUV. Unified partnered

with Lexus and Team One to personalize over 1,000 unique Facebook videos to target an array of micro-target

audiences and deliver highly customized content to potential buyers. The results surpassed all campaign goals,

including a triple digit increase in completed video views.

Of course, such a campaign would not be possible without another important strength of social: the ability to leverage

identity-based targeting vs. solely relying on internet cookies. While identity-based data has been around for a while,

the use of such data for advanced targeting is a recent trend that has been seeing a great deal of traction among smart

social marketers.

Lexus is only one example of a brand capitalizing on the data richness of identity attributes. We see countless

marketers who are exponentially growing their identity-targeting efforts as cookie deletion behavior gains velocity,

and the ability to use social data gets even easier.

Social continues to provide innovative opportunities at a rate previously unseen by marketers. In this edition of The

Smart Social Quarterly™, we’ll showcase several ways brands can leverage the strengths of social and inspire new

advancements for the continued growth of our industry.

We hope you enjoy.

Social continues to provide innovative opportunities at a rate previouslyunseen by marketers

Sincerely,

¹eMarketer 2015 “Social Network Ad revenues Accelerate Worldwide”

Rick MartiraVice President of Market ing

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

C L I E N T S P O T L I G H T : L E X U SHow Lexus's Highly Personal ized Approach to Facebook Video Gassed Up Engagement

5

S O C I A L S P O T L I G H T : F A C E B O O K C U S T O M A U D I E N C E SThese Tactics Use Facebook Custom Audiences To Combine CRM and Social

To Increase Ad Eff ic iency

10

V I D E OFacebook Is YouTube’s Biggest Threat

15

T A R G E T I N GIdentity Is Eating The World

20

P O P C U L T U R EThe Undiscovered Truth About The Social Media Effect Of The Emmys

26

M O R E F R O M U N I F I E D

31

C L I E N T S P O T L I G H T : L E X U S

We knew that a highly customized

approach was necessary in order to

achieve maximum engagement and

awareness for the launch of an

unprecedented product segment for

our brand. Unified helped us automate

our personalized campaign execution in

order to entice a new type of customer

with a luxury crossover vehicle that

went beyond sport-utility.

“

”Te r i H i l l

Media ManagerLEXUS

6

How Lexus’s Highly Personalized

Approach To Facebook Video

Gassed Up Engagement

H ow does one debut a cutting-edge new product line in a way that not only

attracts new buyers but also explains its value in an excruciatingly simple

and powerful way? Lexus marketers faced this very challenge when

determining how social media would fit into an integrated marketing campaign for

the launch of their brand-new luxury crossover SUV, the NX.

Leveraging Unified expertise, Lexus carefully crafted a Facebook strategy featuring a

series of videos with multifaceted messaging. The creative was purposefully intended

to demonstrate how the vehicle provided consumers with a serious upgrade to the

typical SUV, while attempting to attract a fresh audience that was both highly social

and intimately engaged.

C a s e S t u d y

7

The goal was relatively straight forward—drive awareness and engagement for the

Lexus NX roll out. However, taking on such an objective while deploying a record number

of creative renditions, video ads and targeting within a 3 month timeframe is virtually

impossible without the right solution. Utilizing Unified’s campaign automation

technology, Lexus was able to implement their strategy to reach over 600 targeting

groups—including 5 data-powered Custom Audience segments.

While complex to develop and seemingly impossible to execute, the distribution of

thousands of diverse video ads through Unified’s campaign automation technology

was ultimately successful in exceeding the goals for the campaign.

A P P R O A C H

S T R A T E G Y

R E S U L T S

Especially when it comes to testing out creative. Over 1,000 videos were set up

to create just under 4,000 ads.

Each video made a simple comparison between a basic audience interest and its more lavish, luxury counterpart. The comparisons themselves touched on a wide variety of

topics that would appeal to each targeting mix, and included everything from ballpoint pens to travel themes. These scenarios were then connected to how the

Lexus NX was a significant upgrade from standard SUVs.

675 targeting segments were created, honing in on 16 highly valued markets.

B I G G E R I S B E T T E R T E S T I N G T H E T A R G E T I N G

C L E A R C O M P A R I S O N S A R E C O N T A G I O U S

8

P E R S O N A L I Z E D V I D E O S D E P L O Y E D

A D S L A U N C H E D A N D O P T I M I Z E D

P E O P L E R E A C H E D

H I G H E R C O M P L E T E D V I D E O V I E W R A T E

H I G H E R E N G A G E M E N T R A T E C O M P A R E D T O

B E N C H M A R K *

M O R E E F F I C I E N T C P VC O M P A R E D T O G O A L

1 , 0 7 6

3 , 9 9 2

1 1 . 2 M M

3 1 5 %

1 , 6 7 3 %

7 0 %

*Benchmark based on Unified,Facebook and Lexus historical data

9

This case gleaned three powerful lessons for the brand. First, that creating unique

ads targeted to niche audiences is extremely beneficial, and can lead to a greater

presence in competitive markets. Second, video is a powerful way to not only drive

engagement but tell a story with sound, light and motion that surpasses photos.

And third, Unified’s campaign automation was essential to making this

highly customized and complex campaign a reality.

C O N C L U S I O N

A W A R D S

2015Facebook Award

2015Best Use of Data

S O C I A L S P O T L I G H T : F A C E B O O K C U S T O M A U D I E N C E S

After running thousands of campaigns, it

has become evident that marketers that

leverage 1st party CRM lists, regardless

of the size, are the most successful in

targeting a brand’s most qualified online

audience. As an added bonus, social

media marketers should consider using

look-a-like audiences to instantly extend

this relevant reach at scale.

“

”R y a n G a n g

Director, Account ManagementUN IF I ED

11

These Tactics Use Facebook

Custom Audiences To

Combine CRM and Social To

Increase Ad Efficiency

T oday’s marketing public service announcement is:

bigger isn’t always better.

In fact when it comes to social media advertising,

there are certain times where marketers will find that

the bigger the target audience, the harder ROI falls.

This is particularly true of campaigns that are focused

on objectives like video views and conversions (e.g. app

downloads, website clicks, etc.) as opposed to social

engagements or general awareness. In this article,

we’ll pinpoint three tactics you can use to hone in on

the Facebookers who are most relevant to your

initiatives to help you avoid wasting precious

budget dollars on those who aren’t.

12

This all sounds great in theory, but you may

be wondering what in the name of advertising

does CRM (i.e. customer relationship

management) have to do with your Facebook

campaign? Well the answer is rather simple.

Facebook has made it possible to find your

current, past and prospective customers on

their network, and consequently, this gives

you the ability to serve them ads. In fact, we

continuously see campaigns that leverage this

feature outperform benchmarks and deliver

quality conversions for brands. Just upload

your list of emails, phone numbers, website

visitors, Facebook IDs or mobile IDs and

you’re half way there. But as always,

developing a strategy is the most important

and most tricky part. So we’ve put together

three approaches for inspiration.

Prospective customers have a clear interest in

your product or service, but there’s still

something keeping them from completing

the conversion you want. They may have

reached out via email, filled out a web form,

or even added products to a cart only to

abandon the purchase.

Acquiring new customers who actually

complete a purchase is like getting the very

last piece of chocolate cake. It’s satisfying,

delicious, but only lasts the amount of time it

takes for you to shovel it into your mouth. But

when that’s over and done, you’ll need a way

to keep the good times going, or in the case

of marketing, keep them coming back or

accelerating their purchase behavior.

Craft a “no-brainer” offer for first time

buyers with a strong call to action

button to drive off-site traffic.

Try using Facebook Carousel Ads

to display a variety of products,

services or features they may not

have purchased yet.

Leverage video link ads to explain

your value proposition through sight,

sound and motion.

Since customers have already provided

billing details, heavy up on mobile

where conversions occur

at an increased rate because of the

fact that new information doesn’t

have to be entered.

F I N D I N G C U S T O M E R S

W H O F A C E B O O K

P E R S U A D I N G P R O S P E C T S

L O C K I N G D O W N U P S E L L S

In fact, we continuously see campaigns that leverage this feature outperform benchmarks and deliver quality conversions for brands.

1 |

2 |

OUR CREATIVE RECOMMENDATION

OUR CREATIVE RECOMMENDATION

OUR TACTICAL RECOMMENDATION

OUR TACTICAL RECOMMENDATION

13

Whether you are looking to increase product

adoption, get users to make additional

purchases, or win back the hearts of those

who got away, Facebook Custom Audiences

is a great tool to use to not only meet but

beat your campaign goals. Be sure to check

out our cheat sheet on unifiedsocial.com/blog

for even more ideas and motivation on how to

leverage this feature.

All companies go through the pain of the

customer break up—when a buyer says, “it’s

not you, it’s me” and shuts down the money

train. Enticing past clients to come back can be

challenging, but with the right messaging and

tactics, it is certainly possible.

B R I N G I N G B U Y I N G B A C K3 |

Showcase new products, enhancements

or services that they may not be aware

of. Using user reviews and quotes

can help elevate this messaging

to a new level.

Since these users are already familiar

with your company, try a short video

(< 45 seconds) with a relatively

low frequency to capture and

keep their attention.

OUR CREATIVE RECOMMENDATION

OUR TACTICAL RECOMMENDATION

14

V I D E O

With the continued evolution of video

products across social platforms

like Facebook, and a growing trend

towards identity-based marketing, it’s

more important than ever for brands

to shift time and resources towards

developing unique content that delivers

a personalized user experience.

Advertisers who slap their TV spot on

these platforms are not only wasting

money, but alienating themselves from

consumers there to discover unique

and engaging content.

“

”Ke l l i e S a ke y

Director, Marketing Strategy & Sales Operations

UN IF I ED

16

Facebook is

YouTube |s

Biggest Threat

B y J a s o n B e c k e r m a n , C h i e f P r o d u c t O f f i c e r

17

In the marketing world, video is the

undisputed killer medium. The

industry’s conventional wisdom is that

YouTube has an insurmountable lead in the

video advertising market. That

conventional wisdom is dead wrong.

Despite the attention that YouTube gets for

providing content creators — some of whom

make serious money — with a platform to

gain attention and drive ad dollars, as a

business, YouTube does just $4 billion in

revenue annually. While it is making video

gaming color commentators famous,

YouTube barely breaks even, despite its

intense focus on brand advertisers.

If brands want to drive success using video,

they should look beyond YouTube,

because Facebook and its growing network

of channels are poised to disrupt the world

of video advertising. In the process,

Facebook is going to eat YouTube’s lunch.

That’s a big statement. Many people might

not believe it, but they don’t have access to

the data that I do. This is why I know it’s

accurate:

S C A L E &

P E R S O N A L I Z A T I O N

With more than 1.5 billion active users,

Facebook’s user base is 50 percent larger

than YouTube’s. Facebook users already

watch 4 billion videos daily.

Facebook also provides something much

more important than a huge user base.

When combined with marketing automation

technology, Facebook enables personalized

video at scale. When video is personalized

to consumers, it strikes a chord and an

emotional connection with them. Those

consumers not only engage with video on

Facebook, they also promote and share it

with their friends in ways that just don’t

happen on YouTube.

Facebook is also a much stickier

destination than YouTube. Put simply,

how many people do you know who say

things like, “Hold on, I just need to check

YouTube?” Facebook’s News Feed is where

18

consumers live — 60 percent of users say

that it is their primary source for news.

The more people return to Facebook on a

daily or even hourly basis, the more video

they’ll see. Most importantly, 75 percent of

Facebook videos are consumed on mobile

devices, versus just 50 percent of YouTube

videos that are watched on mobile. In a

mobile-first world, that’s critical.

Speaking of mobile, Facebook owns

Instagram and its user base of more than

400 million. Instagram introduced video

advertising last year, and we’ve seen

staggering results that blow away

expectations based on any metric you can

imagine. Feedback from our Fortune 500

customers has been enthusiastic, and we

know that video at scale is coming to

Instagram –and soon.

Channel-wise, Facebook also owns

WhatsApp, which is rapidly approaching 1

billion users, and Oculus VR, which has the

potential to be the most immersive video

advertising platform in history.

Lastly, Facebook has the advantage of

Atlas, the ad server technology it acquired

last year. Atlas extends beyond Facebook’s

own desktop and mobile properties to all

digital advertising, with return-on-

investment measurement that far exceeds

that of outdated cookie technology–yet it

leverages the power of Facebook

identities, and it can be extended to

hundreds of thousands of publishers

across the Web.

T A R G E T I N G

Scale alone isn’t enough to dislodge a

market incumbent. However, Facebook has

another killer tool in its arsenal:

identity-based targeting.

YouTube uses cookies to measure who has

viewed a video. Using cookies, you are — at

best — making a very educated guess about

who a viewer might be, and cookies

flat-out don’t work within mobile apps.

Facebook, on the other hand, knows a

wealth of information about its users.

Age, gender and other demographic

information are available as targeting

options for advertisers, along with

interest targeting. Not only is this

targeting far more accurate than cookie

targeting, it allows advertisers to

segment audiences and match them with

personalized video content. When done

efficiently and at scale, this drives costs

per view down to a point that YouTube

just can’t touch.

19

M E A S U R E M E N T & R O I

Thanks to Facebook’s and Instagram’s

powerful Ads APIs, marketers who are

leveraging video can prove the ROI from

their efforts in very powerful ways. No

matter what your business goal– sales,

engagement, lead generation, brand health

elevation–the combination of the Ads API

and big data platforms can prove that you’re

driving success.

Facebook’s Custom Audiences also enable

analytics in ways that cookies never could.

They are basically like cookie pools of users

who have engaged with your video — but they

never expire. A major entertainment client

used our platform to deliver an audience

analysis that compared the attributes of

people who watched a full video versus who

started watching, but dropped off. We could

then understand the archetype of people who

are consuming content from this brand.

The possibilities for other verticals are

endless. For example, auto companies

could cross-reference audience analysis

with a customer-relationship-management

owner file to determine if content consumers

bought cars or are already owners.

The best that YouTube can provide is

geographical reporting. Geography

pales in comparison to the rich

psychographic details available on

Facebook video engagers.

L O O K I N G F O R W A R D

Facebook is just getting started in video

advertising. Its early results have been

nothing short of amazing, and its

distribution possibilities via Instagram

and Atlas create opportunities that

YouTube just can’t match. This race isn’t

even going to be close–but it will be a fun

one to watch.

YouTube knows that it has ground to make

up, and it is responding. Just last week,

CEO Susan Wojcicki announced a mobile

redesign and that more than one-half of

its views are coming from mobile. On the

Facebook side, I believe that we’ll hear

some really interesting things about video

during its second-quarter earnings call

later this week. Stay tuned!

T A R G E T I N G

Advertisers are making poor investments

in services, systems, and acquired third

party data, to reach the wrong people

with the wrong message. Cookie-based

marketing is, in a word, screwed.

“

”J a s o n B e c ke r m a n

Chief Product Off icer & Cofounder UN IF I ED

21

Identity Is Eating

The World

B y J a s o n B e c k e r m a n , C h i e f P r o d u c t O f f i c e r

22

Marc Andreessen’s 2011 declaration

that software was eating the world

signaled a seismic shift in the

technology industry. The marketing

industry is about to undergo a similar

change: on Madison Avenue and in Silicon

Valley, identity is eating the world.

For over twenty years, digital advertisers have

relied on an ecosystem of weakly linked

technologies. A core component of this

ecosystem is the cookie. Cookies, first

introduced in 1994, are antiquated,

inefficient tools which cause a massive

amount of waste, much of which does not get

accounted for. Privacy advocates rail against

them. Consumers feel violated by them.

Cookies have also driven an inefficient

marketplace of vendors and service

providers that sell and manage audiences of

dubious value. How dubious? Check out the

September 24, 2015 expose from Bloomberg

BusinessWeek1 to get an idea of just how

many cookie-based ads aren’t even viewed by

humans.

On the desktop, cookie targeting is only as

consistent as the user of a browser. For

example, consider a family desktop

computer. One family member may browse

the web for home improvement information,

while another adult frequently shops online.

The kids play games against their friends,

read celebrity gossip and comment on each

others pictures. Cookies do not know that

different people are sitting in front of the

screen at any given moment, and they

combine all that activity together to create a

profile of one completely inaccurate “user”.

Advertisers are investing tens of millions of

dollars to acquire and target against these

cookie based audiences that have been

collected by desktop browsers — even though

they are inaccurate. More importantly, in a

world where mobile is the future, cookies

simply don’t work efficiently on phones and

the ability to bridge the two worlds is riddled

with issues. Every year that desktop usage

declines in favor of mobile; cookie usage and

audience quality will follow a similar decline.

Cookie-based audiences (also called 3rd party

data segments, with too many 3rd parties to

name) are usually sold to many different ad

tech vendors before ultimately being made

available to advertisers. They often come with

hidden margins that reflect ambiguous

packaging and too many middlemen.

Buying, selling, and deployment of ad

inventory against these cookies is complex

and lacks transparency. These investments

display alarming inaccuracy due to the

chaining together of many disparate

1 h t t p : / / w w w. b l o o m b e r g . co m / fe a t u r e s / 2 0 1 5 - c l i c k- f r a u d /

23

technologies and data providers, sometimes

referred to as “breakage”. It can be argued

that 3rd party data segments may be doing

more harm than good, including propping up

an ecosystem of unnecessary vendors built

around them.

Advertisers are making poor investments in

services, systems, and acquired 3rd party data,

to reach the wrong people with the wrong

message. Cookie-based marketing is, in a

word, screwed.

I D E N T I T Y : A N E W H O P E

The social media giants — Facebook, Twitter,

LinkedIn, and more recently Instagram and

Pinterest — are beginning to make the power

of identity available to marketers. They’re

doing it via a mix of powerful tools which

will largely eliminate the need for many

3rd party data segments and their related

infrastructure. Identity-based marketing

is not just going to replace cookie-based

marketing, it’s going to usher in a world of

new opportunities for advertisers.

For example, Facebook’s global reach — not

Facebook alone, but its network of Instagram,

Messenger and more — is huge, and

comparable to that of all other publishers

combined. It allows marketers to reach

people on multiple devices and formats, with

targeting granularity across desktop, mobile,

video, and local. More importantly, Facebook

knows its users’ identities. Identity is an

amazing combination of self-proclaimed data

(e.g. “I live in New York City”), predictive

data garnered through the use of artificial

intelligence (e.g. “I just checked in to LAX,

therefore I’m traveling”), tracking data from

usage of its Like buttons across the internet

(e.g. “I liked Hillary Clinton or I liked Jeb

Bush”), and social graph data which can

measure content consumption patterns (e.g.

“I read New York Times articles”). Identity

data offers psychographic, technographic, and

activity information that cookies simply can’t

match; and it’s getting better as the data

appended to the user’s identity continues to

evolve. Or, as BusinessWeek says: “Facebook

traffic is real people.”

For instance, because Facebook has

Messenger, it can apply artificial intelligence

to conclude how users converse with each

other to allow advertisers the capability to

target people using the language that they

converse in most frequently. Similarly, users’

photos allow Facebook to detect location and

social connection data. These identity-based

data sets enable actionable insights and

24

targeting capabilities that are made available

through Facebook’s ad products and APIs.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest

all possess similarly accurate identity

profiles, products, and API platforms.

Campaigns on these social networks generally

outperform those that leverage cookie-based

ad tech systems on metrics that matter to

advertisers across all verticals. Even better,

their accessibility and ease of deployment

means the complexity that is typically

required in marketing is being reduced to the

point where there are significant cost savings

as a result of using these platforms. Identity

means that marketers can reach their exact

target audience with the right creative

message on a global basis, deploying millions

of investment capital via one technology

provider. They can then measure the results

against their business goals, from awareness

to conversion.

This is the reality of identity and the current

opportunity for marketers.

B E Y O N D T H E

W A L L E D G A R D E N

The power of identity-based marketing is not

limited to social channels. These platforms

are the largest consumer databases in the

history of the world, and their value will

begin to shift out of singular properties into

a wider ecosystem over the next couple of

years. With identity-based marketing an

advertiser can find a user on a desktop

environment, target them with a secondary

message on mobile, and a third message back

on the desktop. That connected customer

journey can repeat over a prolonged period of

time with sophisticated product and

consumer based narratives. With Atlas, the

ad server technology that Facebook acquired

two years ago, this capability will be enabled

across all channels: connected television,

digital radio, websites and mobile

applications, and eventually, the coming wave

of virtual reality enabled devices and

applications. Similarly, Twitter just

announced another way to extend its

identity beyond its core platform to a larger

network of applications. Extending the power

of identity beyond the social networks’

primary applications will deliver robust

capabilities marketers have not been able to

easily take advantage of with legacy

cookie-based systems.

C L O S I N G T H E L O O P

O N R O I

25

Identity creates an incredible opportunity for

marketers, but it also presents some

challenges and departures from traditional

digital practices. With no less than five major

identity-based social channels to leverage,

reaching the right audience on the right

channels simultaneously can be challenging

without an ability to connect the dots and the

expertise to know what products to use

at what time. Additionally, identity-based

campaigns also generate an incredible

amount of valuable data that can be

difficult to aggregate, normalize, and

analyze. To empower a market to solve this

challenge Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,

Instagram and Pinterest all offer APIs that

offer programmatic access to identity-based

inventory.

These APIs also offer real-time access to the

data that is generated from investments in

these platforms. That accessibility makes it

much easier and faster to accurately measure

the closed-loop ROI of identity-based

marketing investments. For example, by

combining CRM data with identity-based

audience data, a marketer can follow an

entire customer life cycle from impression to

purchase. Consider the automotive

customer’s life cycle: an ad is displayed to a

user, that user then visits a website to build a

car, requests more information, buys the car

from a dealer, re-engages with the dealer’s

parts and service team over time, and

eventually comes back to buy another car

years down the road. Owning the consumer

from engagement to purchase and eventually

repurchase is the holy grail for every industry.

This capability to build customer loyalty is

now possible through the power of identity.

Executing on complex initiatives, like the

vehicle ownership lifecycle example, is only

possible when power of accurate consumer

identities are leveraged to power

marketing investment at scale. Powerful

marketing software, built with enterprise

discipline, leverages identity-based APIs. It

is built to connect the dots between internal

and external business systems, remove waste,

add transparency, and turn valuable data

into actionable intelligence that impacts

marketers decisions on a global scale.

The marketing industry is at an inflection

point. Cookies are a dying technology, and

soon the cookie will crumble. Identity is the

future which will unlock new capabilities

formerly only dreamed of by marketers. We

are early in this transformation and the

sooner marketers leverage the power of

identity, the more ahead of the curve they

will be, and the more efficient their audience

investments will be.

P O P C U L T U R E

While it’s well known that large-scale

televised events provide increased social

media engagement and visibility for

entertainment properties and brands

alike, the quality of these interactions

depends on the volume and content of

the posts. Marketers have an invaluable

opportunity to develop deeper, more

impactful connections by creating

original content before, during and after

the event, as opposed to solely sharing

or retweeting posts from other accounts.

“

”Ra s h i d a B o y d

Marketing Manager UN IF I ED

27

W ith jabs made at ex butter-lovin’ controversial chef Paula Dean, a surprise

appearance by car wreck survivor Tracy Morgan, an award dedicated to the

entire trans community, and a thought-provoking Harriet Tubman reference, it’s

no wonder this year’s Emmy Awards was able to reel in 11.9MM viewers. But while there were

many surprises that night, the fact that such a respected, star-studded event would boost

social media engagement for show nominees by 32.0% may not. The truth of the matter is,

award shows like the Emmys are valuable and practically guarantee exposure. However what

is not touched upon is how posting volume and original content plays into how successful a

show will be in leveraging the opportunity. We analyzed the Facebook and Twitter accounts of

the shows nominated for Best Comedy and Drama Series to see if we could uncover any key

learnings, and the good news is, we found some.

G A M E O F T H R O N E S

206.7K

1,467.9%

F A C E B O O K & T W I T T E R E N G A G E M E N T S

( S H A R E S , C O M M E N T S , L I K E S , R E T W E E T S

& F A V O R I T E S )

I N C R E A S E I N F A C E B O O K & T W I T T E R

E N G A G E M E N T S ( S H A R E S , C O M M E N T S ,

L I K E S , R E T W E E T S & F A V O R I T E S ) P E R D A Y

C O M P A R E D T O T H E N O M I N A T I O N P E R I O D

A M E T H O D O L O G Y F I T F O R T H E S T A R S

Our approach here was rather simple.

We looked at the verified Facebook

and Twitter accounts for the shows

nominated for Best Comedy Series (Louie,

Modern Family, Parks and Recreation,

Silicon Valley, Transparent, Unbreakable

Kimmy Schmidt, Veep) and Best Drama

Series (Better Call Saul, Downton Abbey,

Game of Thrones, Homeland, House of

Cards, Mad Men, Orange Is The New Black)

to measure social engagements received

on their original posts. This in essence,

means that if they retweeted content

from a different account, it would not be

included in this analysis. The

engagement was then broken down

into four main time periods:

6 months prior to the date the

nominees were announced (Jan 14-Jul

15, 2015) to get a sense of engagement

levels before the Emmys were a factor

The period between the date the

nominees were announced and the

Emmy Awards (Jul 16-Sept19, 2015) to

measure the impact of the

announcement itself

The day of and day after the Emmy

Awards (Sept 20-21, 2015) to track the

effect of the awards and the

conversations the day after

The week after (Sept 22-28, 2015) to

measure the rate of decay if any

T H E B I G P L A Y E R S O N T H E S M A L L S C R E E N

Although the winners had very different

approaches to original content, two main

findings about the day of and after the

Emmys were aired stood out:

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O n l y D o w n W i t h O P P ( O t h e r

P e o p l e ’ s P o s t s ) ? Yo u M a y

B e M i s s i n g O u t

Veep and Game Of Thrones both won

major awards, however only Game Of

Thrones stressed original content. This

led to hundreds of thousands more

engagements for the show in addition to

the earned activity they already would

naturally receive from winning. In

contrast, Veep chose to retweet and

share content from other accounts.

T R A N S P A R E N T

143.4F A C E B O O K & T W I T T E R E N G A G E M E N T S

P E R 1 K U S E R S ( S H A R E S , C O M M E N T S ,

L I K E S , R E T W E E T S & F A V O R I T E S )

+ 2 0 6 . 7 KE n g a g e m e nt

29

T r a n s p a r e n c y I s T h e

B e s t P o l i c y

It’s one thing to build a massive amount

of engagements, but quite another to

have a plugged-in, active audience.

Transparent, who’s lead and supporting

actors won Emmy gold, were very active

online. Their strategy of sharing and

posting a variety of original content

(video and photo) led to a tremendous

amount of audience activity—more than

twice the amount of any other comedy

or drama nominated.

A N O T S O F I N E L I N E B E T W E E N S M I L E S A N D S U S P E N S E

Surprisingly, the comedies and dramas

had very different behaviors on social

media. But before we get to the

differences, lets take a quick moment

to look at the similarities. Across both

genres, we saw a drop in the number

of posts published once the nominees

were announced—about 52.5% overall.

And, as expected, we also saw posting

volume skyrocket the day of and day

after the show, by 483.9%. And that my

friends, is where the similarities end.

The disparities, which span both posting

volume and engagement, are as follows:

The dramas posted 2.1 times the

amount of content as the comedies,

resulting in 28.9MM more engagements

during the entire span of time we

measured.

Comedies, likely due to the fact that

they post much less, saw the number

of engagements received per post go

through the roof between the

nominee announce

Dramas had high engagement prior to

the nominee announcement period,

then saw a decline of 49.8% during the

period between the announcement and

the show itself, only to rebound with

a 64.3% increase on the night of the

show.

Both comedies and dramas saw

engagement decline in the week

after the show as one would expect,

however engagement for the comedies

only decreased 16.2% versus a

whopping 60.4% for dramas.

Y O U G E T O U T W H A T Y O U P U T I N

While these shows received great exposure

online regardless of if they indulged their

social audiences, there was an extra award

in it for those that increased activity. In

general, whether you are a brand, show

or service, you can potentially miss out on

substantial earned engagement if you don’t

post consistently, often and lack original

content. To entice audience reactions,

marketers should publish a variety of

content that can build deeper connections

with users and potential customers.

30

EN

GA

GE

ME

NT

S

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S I G N U P F O R A F R E E D E M O

C H E C K T H E M O U T A T :

U N I F I E D . C O M / B L O G

V I E W O U R N E W R E S E A R C H P A G E :

U N I F I E D . C O M / R E S E A R C H

P H O T O C R E D I T

Library and Archives Canada“Globe, c irca 1904 / Globe terrestre , vers 1904”CC BY 2.0 / f l ickr.com

bkaree1“s i lhouette”CC BY 2.0 / f l ickr.com

Samuel Johnson“Si lhouette at sunset”CC BY 2.0 / f l ickr.com

Alan Light“Emmy graphic”CC BY 2.0 / f l ickr.com

W W W . U N I F I E D . C O M